Reentry Bridge Network

Walls to Windows Project – a community beautification collaboration
The Walls to Windows Project book can be purchased at www.Amazon.com effective October 1, 2015

Artists who reside inside Richland Correctional Institution created over 100 paintings that are installed over boarded-up windows and doors of 13 blighted, abandoned houses in the northwest Ward One of Canton, Ohio. This project is a gift from the prisoners to the children of the neighborhoods in hopes that the paintings will give them joy and brighten up their living space.

The list of houses is below:

315 Belden Ave NE – African Kings/Queens

319 Belden Ave NE – African Kings/Queens

1943 3rd St NE – Super Hero/Star Wars

1705 3rd St NE – Aquarium/Fish

1421 Tuscarawas St E – Children

633 Young NE – Dora the Explorer

819 Young NE – Celebrities

615 15th St NE – Turtles

703 10th NW – Princesses

913 10th St NW – Reflections

825 8th St NW – Disney

We would like to thank our community partners for such a successful collaboration:

Prison Library Partnership – RBN has a perpetual collaboration with universities, groups, and individuals to fill the shelves of prison libraries with donated books that support secondary education, philosophy, theology, health, and recreational reading.

Carol’s vision that drives prison art projects is threefold and she believes that these means will work together to create a real bridge between prisoners and community, ultimately reducing crime and recidivism in America.

to provide arts venues for Prisoners to have a voice outside the prison wall thru which they can feel validated as individuals, and

to impact the outside community with the awareness that America’s prison community is made up of incarcerated individuals, not of steel cell blocks – and most of those individuals will reenter the community.

In collaboration with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, Dennis Terez, the Ohio Federal Public Defender, and Reentry Bridge Network, on March 4, 2014, Carol E. Briney, exec. director of RBN, issued a call for entries to the north Ohio prisons, parole regions, and juvenile facilities exclusively to generate 300 additional pieces of original art. This collection will replace the art in the northern offices of the Ohio Federal Public Defender and the current collection will move to the southern offices: Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati. This project is called NEOOAP-North East Ohio Offender Art Project. The art submissions are to reflect the theme Positive Messages to the Youth from inside the Walls. The project has its hub at Grafton Correctional Institution with Eric Gardenhire as the staff coordinator, furthering community service, vocational mentoring and training.

Reentry Bridge Network donated framing equipment and supplies to Grafton Reintegration Camp (GRC) so the men at that location will be able to professionally mat and frame the submissions. The standardized frames will be built by offenders in the wood shop program.

The show will be curated by Carol E. Briney and a team of master artists who are residents at GRC or community volunteers. Two pieces of art will be chosen to use as the front and back cover of the Prison Coffee Table Book Project, Volume 3, which will contain images of the entire exhibit.

The Federal Public Defender, Dennis Terrez who has been a reentry partner with ODRC for many years will transport and hang the collections. Dennis will host an open house with broad media coverage at each of his six offices. Galleries and universities will be invited to participate in the project. A more visible public venue with a university or museum is being sought as a permanent home for the whole collection to ensure a large public audience to promote and further gain recognition of the talent, plight, and individuality of the people who live behind prison walls.

Mid October will be the unveiling and exhibit of the entire NEOOAP collection at Grafton Reintegration Camp prior to it being divided between three city locations. The Prison Coffee Table Book Project Vol. 3 will be available on Amazon.com by November 15, 2014. Dennis Terez will host open house events for the public and media at each of his six offices – Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati – in the month of December 2014.

FACT:
One-third of the 51,000 Ohio prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes. Duh?

Analysis of the Evolution of Religion inside Male Prisons, as a Predictor of Recidivism Project – This discussion group was created to prove a graduate paper by the same name. Prisoners filled out a 28-page questionnaire. The discussions occurred over a four-month period, in four-hour weekly sessions. Though the sociology paper had received an A+, the 12 participating prisoners proceeded to dissect and disagree with most all of the social constructs and theories, and made good sense in their analogy. The beauty of bantering with male prisoners on this level is that they out of necessity tend to think on many more dimensions than we on the outside do. Their approach and perspective has been dramatically altered by the prison experience; that great value is found in their conclusions and questions. It was the final consensus of the group that the paper had no real value in its content, and the author, Carol E. Briney, concurred.